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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

Renewable energy investment is not only for energy deployment and world ecology management, it is also for jobs. Nations can choose ruthless economic growth when economic growth is never accompanied by democracy, empowerment and human rights or fruitless economic growth when growth is accompanied by reducing job opportunities.

Throughout the world availability of good jobs is the cheapest way to create human development, enlarging peoples choices to live a long , decent and productive life. Renewable energy technologies create more jobs per megawatt of power generated, and per dollar invested in construction, manufacturing and installation as compared to coal or natural gas. (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

I often write here that I’m never nasty or condescending to anyone who submits a business plan, regardless of how asinine their ideas. I have an admission to make:  while that was true early, on, it’s no longer the case.  Now, I get descriptions of perpetual motion machines and other theoretically impossible devices at the rate of approximately once a week. Each “inventor’ has one curious trait in common: he’s looking for that last couple hundred thousand dollars of investment capital to build a prototype.

True, a few years ago, I had the patience of Job with respect to garbage like this, but it’s wearing thin. I told one guy recently:

Though I don’t know anything about the securities laws in – (wherever he was from; I don’t remember) if you raise money from people here in the U.S., you’ll very likely wind up in prison.

He wrote back tersely: “I don’t need you.”  LOL.

Just now, someone wrote me from Armenia with a detailed description of a machine that makes electricity from compressed air (somehow omitting the source of the energy that was required to compress the air). I spent several minutes of my (finite) life reading this, before responding:

Sorry, what you’re describing violates the laws of physics. I’m not saying you won’t be able to find investors, just that you’ll need to target people who lack even the most basic education. Don’t fret though; that’s not too great a challenge in today’s world.

See? I can be both nasty AND condescending. Just thought I’d get that off my chest.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Fossil Fuels

As readers may have noticed, I’ve begun promoting the launch of my second book, Is Renewable Really Doable? (available March 15th) using the 32-page report “Insights into LCOE – The Levelized Cost of Energy” as a give-away.

In response to my mentioning the LCOE concept, Henk Daalder responds:

No, we do not need to know what it costs to get sustainable energy, because the fossil route is always more expensive than the sustainable route. (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

Nate Hagens is  a well-known authority on issues related to global resource depletion. Until recently he was lead editor of The Oil Drum, one of the most popular and highly-respected websites for analysis and discussion of global energy supplies and the future implications of energy decline.

Shortly after we were introduced, Nate suggested that I attend a small, private conference at the Aspen Institute in Washington D.C., at which he and some colleagues made a two-hour presentation to about 30 representatives of various NGOs. I was honored, and overwhelmed to be in the presence of so many brilliant people. As I told them as I was leaving the lovely reception that followed, “Sorry, I have to catch a train. And besides, I’ve absorbed as much as I possibly can in one day. My brain hurts.”

I am very grateful to Nate for his help with the project, and I know readers will find his insights quite enlightening.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Biomass

I’m one of these people who essentially runs his life off his “to-do” list — a list of incomplete actions in a Word file that is always open, to which I’m constantly adding, deleting, and reprioritizing.

Here’s something I’ve looked at every day for the last few weeks:

Identify and support a few of the top players in biofuels. Short list: Enerkem, LanzaTech, ZeaChem, Virent Energy Systems, Sapphire Energy, Coskata, Terrabon, Mascoma, Cobalt Technologies, Joule Unlimited, Genomatica, Algenol, SG Biofuels.

I suppose I really DO need to do this, but I’m dreading the task. (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Solar Thermal

It’s the birthday of Alexander Graham Bell, whose telephone came as the accidental consequence of his interest in developing a tool that might teach deaf people how to speak. To me, it’s another reminder that accidental discoveries are extremely common. My friend Wally Rippel discussed this with me last time we got together.

When Sputnik was launched, we were thinking about bombs and spy satellites. Now, the applications are hurricane observation and navigational systems.  (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

In my quest to unpack the issues of government subsidies and incentives, I wanted to ask the Environmental Law Institute to go on record and explain their graphic “Energy Subsidies Black, Not Green” and the accompanying paper, “Estimating U.S. Government Subsidies to Energy Sources: 2002-2008.” The organization believes that the current energy and climate debate would benefit from a broader understanding of both the explicit and hidden government subsidies that affect energy use throughout the economy. In an effort to examine this issue, they conducted a review of fossil fuel and renewable energy subsidies for those years.

I thank ELI spokespeople Jay Pendergrass and Lisa Goldman for this wonderfully insightful interview.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Fossil Fuels

Every once in a while I hear something from Washington D.C. that provides a ray of hope that perhaps a bit of sanity may eventually prevail in the U.S. energy policy. Obama sure has disappointed a bunch of people in the last couple of years – especially the people who voted for him — but here’s something he said the other day:

Does anyone really think that Congress should give them another $4 billion dollars this year? Of course not. It’s outrageous. It’s inexcusable. And I’m asking Congress: Eliminate this oil industry giveaway right away. I want them to vote on this in the next few weeks. Let’s put every single member of Congress on record. You can stand with the oil companies or you can stand up for the American people. You can keep subsidizing a fossil fuel that’s been getting taxpayer dollars for a century or you can place your bets on a clean energy future.

Btw, it’s FAR more than $4 billion when you add them all up.

In any case, as they say, hope springs eternal.

 

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

I first met Tom Konrad, a financial analyst specializing in the alternative energy sector, in my quest to align 2GreenEnergy with some heavy-duty know-how in this arena. He’s a portfolio manager, and freelance writer – best known for the innumerable blog posts he’s written on AltEnergyStocks.com, and at the Green Stocks blog on Forbes.com.

Tom’s Ph.D. is in mathematics, specifically “complex dynamics,” a branch of chaos theory. His study here led to his conviction that knowing the limits of our ability to predict is much more important than predictions themselves, a lesson he applies to both climate science and the financial markets.

I feel I’ve learned a great deal from him, and I’ve very much enjoyed the association.

Again, my thanks for a terrific contribution.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Solar Thermal

We’re working up another in our series of infographics, in our quest to lay out some of the basics of renewable energy for people who may be new to the subject. Here’s the text that I propose to use for a piece called “The Pros and Cons of Solar Energy,” which I posted on Renewable Energy World.com the other day.  

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